Las Vegas shooter is white American, but many jumped to conclude him a Muslim

October 3, 2017, 6:00 PM IST

LAS VEGAS: Despite the fact that the suspected gunman at Las Vegas deadliest mass shooting has been named by police as white American male, many in the initial hours of the reportage jumped to assume that the shooter was a Muslim.

Hindustan Times website shared the news with the headline, ‘It was hysteria. I have never been this scared’: Panic as Las Vegas Muslim shooter opened fire.’ The website later apologised for the same.

At least 58 people were killed and 500 injured when a heavily armed “lone wolf” gunman opened fire from a 32-floor hotel room on an open-air concert on the Las Vegas Strip in the deadliest mass shooting in US history.

Even though ISIS claimed the 64-year-old Nevada man Stephen Paddock was behind the Sunday night massacre but provided no evidence to back up the claim.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had found no such connection so far. “We have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group,” FBI special agent Aaron Rouse said.

President Donald Trump while signing the executive order in January claimed to protect Americans from “radical Islamic extremists ” by banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

However between 2001 and 2015, more Americans have been killed by homegrown right-wing extremists than by than by Muslim extremists, according to a study by New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC.